Virginia Postsecondary Education for Students with Disabilities

The Shift from IEP to College Accommodations

In high school, your student's IEP guarantees a Free Appropriate Public Education. The school identifies needs, provides evaluations at public expense, modifies curriculum, and develops the program. Your student shows up; the system does the rest.

At any Virginia college or university, that framework is gone. Postsecondary disability services operate under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and the ADA — not IDEA. The shift is fundamental: the school no longer has an obligation to seek out students with disabilities. The student must self-identify, apply for accommodations, and provide documentation at their own expense.

Documentation Requirements Vary by College

There's no statewide standard for what documentation Virginia colleges accept. Each institution sets its own requirements, and the differences can be significant.

Central Virginia Community College (CVCC): Requires documentation from a qualified professional that includes a full clinical description, current functional limitations, specific assessment scores based on adult norms, and the diagnostic methodology used. An IEP or 504 plan alone is typically insufficient without the underlying testing.

Reynolds Community College: Accepts high school IEPs or 504 plans but reserves the right to request additional clinical documentation to verify current functional impact.

Virginia Peninsula Community College (VPCC): Enforces diagnosis-specific requirements. Learning disabilities need a formal psychoeducational evaluation by a licensed psychologist. Vision and hearing impairments require documentation from medical specialists — not school-based screenings. All documentation is confidential and purged five years after the student's last semester.

Southwest Virginia Community College (SWCC): Offers a more flexible baseline — if the student has an IEP or 504 plan less than three years old, the college can use it to establish eligibility for academic accommodations.

The takeaway: check with your target college's disability services office during the student's junior year. If they need a clinical evaluation that the school didn't provide, you'll need time to schedule testing, which can take months and comes at the family's expense.

What Colleges Will and Won't Provide

Colleges provide equal access, not modified outcomes. Reasonable accommodations include:

• Extended time on tests
• Note-taking services or recording permission
• Priority seating in classrooms
• Alternative format materials (large print, digital text)
• Reduced-distraction testing environments

Colleges will not:

• Modify course content or lower academic standards
• Alter grading criteria
• Provide personal care attendants
• Guarantee course completion or degree attainment
• Proactively monitor the student's progress (there's no IEP progress reporting)

This gap between high school support and college support is where many students struggle. The IEP team should be building self-advocacy skills into the transition plan — can the student explain their disability, identify what they need, and request accommodations from a professor in an office setting?

The Applied Studies Pathway to Community College

Students who earn a Virginia Applied Studies Diploma face a different admissions process. Under Southwest Virginia Community College (SWCC) regulations, a student with this credential must pass the Virginia Placement Test to demonstrate "Ability to Benefit" before enrolling.

Even with a passing score, the pathway has limits:

• The student can enroll in certificate programs that don't require a high school diploma as a prerequisite
• Passing the test does not establish eligibility for federal financial aid
• Other institutions set their own admission and program requirements

This doesn't mean college is impossible for Applied Studies graduates — but it means the pathway looks different and planning should start early. Some Virginia community colleges have specific transition programs designed for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities that provide supported college experiences alongside non-disabled peers.

Self-Advocacy as a Transition Goal

The most important skill for college success isn't academic — it's the ability to navigate the accommodation system independently. Unlike high school, where parents attend IEP meetings and advocate for services, college-level accommodations are the student's responsibility.

IEP transition goals that prepare students for this include:

• Independently requesting accommodations from a teacher or professor
• Explaining their disability and accommodation needs in their own words
• Managing an accommodation letter process (picking up letters from disability services, delivering them to professors each semester)
• Using assistive technology without prompting
• Recognizing when they need help and knowing where to go for it

If the student can't do these things before they leave high school, the IEP team needs to build instruction in these skills into the transition plan rather than assuming the student will figure it out on their own.

Planning the Transition to College

The Virginia IEP Transition to Adulthood Guide covers the complete high school to college transition — including which documentation to gather before graduation, how to navigate the disability services application at Virginia community colleges, and how to build self-advocacy instruction into the IEP so your student arrives at college prepared to manage their own accommodations.

See more Virginia guides →